The supply of California avocados in the marketplace this spring and summer “is going to be significantly less than it was last year,” said Larry McDaniel, vice president of McDaniel Fruit Co. in Fallbrook, CA, in an interview with The Produce News March 24.

At the same time, “demand for California avocados and for our ‘Linda-Vista’ brand is going to be extremely strong. This light crop out of California is just not going to be able to keep up with the demand for it,” he said. “So here at McDaniel, we have teamed with our Peruvian partners, and we have in place a strong Peruvian import program that is set to begin at the end of May,” continuing through September.

That program, which is also in the “Linda-Vista” brand, will “support our sales on both the West [Coast] and the East Coast,” he said.

Larry McDaniel, vice president of McDaniel Fruit Co. in Fallbrook, CA.“We are very excited about the Peruvian program augmenting our California supply with quality avocados,” McDaniel continued. Quality and sizing should both be good out of Peru, “so while the supply of California avocados will be short this season, this Peruvian avocado season should overlay the California season in a very complementary manner.”

Although the California harvest was already in progress, “at this point, California supply has been relatively modest year-to-date, Chile and Mexico being the dominant players in the market right now,” he said. “I think the California supply will begin to increase as we move into April, and we will be in full swing for Cinco de Mayo and running full volume into September.”

The current Chilean season “is winding down,” he said. “It should be concluded by the end of March with any significant volume.”

Mexican volume was also expected to begin its seasonal decline soon.

At McDaniel Fruit, “we will continue to do Mexico right on probably into June, predominantly on the East Coast,” McDaniel said. But “that will wind down in June,” and by then, Chilean arrivals will be in the market. The focus for McDaniel from that point through September will be on fruit from California, together with “the collateral supply that we are going to access [primarily from Peru] to make sure that there is no interruption” in availability of fruit for customers. “We have a very loyal ‘Linda-Vista’ brand following, so we will have no interruption of supply,” he said.

“Obviously, we will have a very strong market that is going to be very good for the growers,” he added.

For the 2014 California avocado season, McDaniel Fruit has nearly doubled its bagging capacity, McDaniel said. “We have found over the last several years that our best tool for increasing our sales velocity as well as increasing our returns to our growers” has been “aggressively promoting our bagging program. So to that end we have expanded our bagging capacity for this upcoming season.”

On sales at McDaniel Fruit are President Rankin McDaniel along with Rankin McDaniel Jr., Laurie Johnson and Pat Maggio.